2022 Eclipse Awards: Modern Games
It takes an unusually good turf horse to be considered for 3-year-old male championship honors. Dirt races with a particular focus on the Triple Crown form the division’s spine. Modern Games isn’t just a turf horse, he’s a turf horse based in England, but he was so good in two 2022 North American starts that here he stands, one of three 3-year-olds who could be crowned champion, as well as being a finalist for male turf champion.
Modern Games was the best 2-year-old of 2021 to run a turf race in North America, though his sharp tally in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf at Del Mar was, shall we say, fraught. Accidentally taken out of parimutuel racing because of a mistaken scratch behind the starting gate, Modern Games raced for purse money only at Del Mar and showed he occupied a different class than the American grass horses.
The same held true late last summer and fall. A Godolphin homebred trained at Moulton Paddocks in England by Charlie Appleby, whose shippers to North America have been running wild for years now, Modern Games began his season winning a European classic, the French 2000 Guineas over a one-turn mile at Longchamp. Given a chance to stretch his distance capabilities going 1 5/16 miles in the French Derby, Modern Games finished a plucky third of 15, beaten more than five lengths by high-class Vadeni while confirming his connections’ belief that the colt was a miler.
:: Full list of 2022 Eclipse Awards finalists, including profile stories
Cut back to seven furlongs in the Prix Jean Prat, Modern Games turned in his lone flat run of the year, finishing fifth, but less than three weeks later, on July 27, on a date when American 3-year-olds still were months away from facing their elders, Modern Games ran second over a mile in the Group 1 Sussex Stakes, beaten only by Europe’s best miler, 4-year-old Baaeed.
All year, Godolphin and Appleby had plotted further overseas adventure for Modern Games, a homebred by Dubawi out of Modern Ideals, by New Approach. The first came Sept. 17 in the Grade 1 Ricoh Woodbine Mile, a hinge point for Modern Games’s Eclipse candidacy. This victory, with the fine South American import Ivar finishing second by more than five lengths, was both ridiculously easy and very fast, Modern Games’s 112 Beyer Speed Figure was the best turf Beyer posted anywhere in North America during 2022.
Appleby went to the well again, running Modern Games over a straight course at Ascot and on very soft ground in the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes just three weeks before the FanDuel Breeders’ Cup Mile, the main autumn goal. Modern Games does his best work around turns and on firmer footing, yet still put up a competitive second in the QE II.
His passage through the Mile proved less than ideal, and while less-than-stellar competition, by top-class standards, helped his cause, Modern Games hit every seam with perfect timing under William Buick becoming the first horse to win the Mile the year after the Juvenile Turf.
Champion 3-year-old and male turf champion or not, exciting news after the Mile: There will be a 4-year-old campaign for this sterling colt. Let the Games continue.
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